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Gambinos Name Cali Boss as Cefalu Steps Aside

I am well aware that this story has been refuted in several follow-up reports; I let it stand as is purposefully, not because I forgot, don't know or am too lazy to update it. I believe Cali is boss, in other words.From DNAInfo New York:

NEW YORK CITY — The Gambino crime family is set to name Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali as its new godfather.

Cali — a native New Yorker who traces his roots firmly to Sicily — is to be secretly anointed as the next head of the nation’s largest La Cosa Nostra organization, sources told DNAinfo New York.

The sources say Cali’s ascent from underboss is imminent and will put him in complete control of the Mafia family that has 750 members and associates and was once ruled by the likes of John “The Dapper Don” Gotti and the group's infamous namesake, Carlo Gambino.

A top New York City law enforcement source said the Gambino capos continue to look up to Cali, 48, because of his old-school approach to running a massive crime family, his adherence to traditional Mafia values, personal family ties that stretch across the Atlantic to Italy and his insistence that members maintain a low profile.

The latter continues a break with the flashy, headline-grabbing era marked by Gotti, whose visage once graced the cover of Time magazine. Gotti died of throat cancer in prison in 2002.

Cefalu is stepping aside.

Sources say the current boss, Domenico "Greaseball" Cefalu, 76, is a native Sicilian with a long history of heroin smuggling and several stints in prison. He is stepping aside to allow his younger protege to take the reins of the family's lucrative gambling, loansharking and construction rackets.

"The family believes Cali is more dynamic and that Cefalu has become too laid back . . . and that's not what a money making organization wants," another law enforcement source said.

Cali got his start in the mob by running a fruit store on 18th Avenue in Brooklyn called Arcobaleno, which means "rainbow" in Italian. The feds say it doubled as a front for criminal activities.

His parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Palermo, Italy. He eventually married into mob royalty when he wed the daughter of one of the Inzerillos, who are known as one of the Mafia powerhouses in Italy.

He is also a nephew of John and Joseph Gambino, who are influential hoods connected to the famous “Pizza Connection” drug trafficking case of the 1980s.

Cali made his bones under the Gottis while operating in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey.

According to the FBI, he officially became the Gambino "ambassador to the Sicilian Mafia" and a rising star when Gotti and Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano roamed the city, ruling rackets and murdering dozens of people.

In 2008, Cali and scores of other hoods were arrested in a massive drug and racketeering investigation dubbed "Operation Old Bridge" that centered on extortion of a Staten Island trucking executive who became an FBI wire-wearing informant.

The case also involved planned NASCAR races on the island. Cali pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and spent a year in jail.

“The Gambinos like Cali because of his low-key profile and old-school values,” a law enforcement source said. “The family wants to keep things that way."

Over the past several decades, and thanks to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, the feds have severely reduced the influence of the Gambinos and the other four crime families over the past decade, breaking their grip on the billion-dollar labor union and construction industries.

But the mob has remained strong in traditional money-making operations involving gambling, loansharking and prostitution, law enforcement authorities say.

Here is some info on the author of this post, which some of you think is so incorrect (or it's one guy trying to break my balls - if this is you, B.C., I'm not impressed.)

Murray Weiss is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, columnist and editor, and is considered an expert on government, law enforcement, criminal justice, organized crime and terrorism.From exposing the secrets of murderers, mob bosses and terrorists to coining the expression "Rough Sex," Murray has held a number of prominent writing, bureau chief and editor positions at two of the country's largest newspapers, the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Under former Post editor Pete Hamill, Weiss served for nearly a year as metropolitan editor during one of the paper's most difficult, and colorful, periods when it felt like the Titanic after striking an iceberg.He has written scores of exclusive front page articles – among them the national disclosures that a rogue NBA referee was on a Mafia payroll and the link between the Ft. Hood Massacre Army psychiatrist and an outspoken Al Qaeda leader. Others involved stories recognizable by single names or phrases: Louima; Diallo; Gotti; Madoff; Preppy Murder, Mob Cops, 9/11, Kennedy Rape, Sean Bell, Central Park Jogger and Crown Heights Riot.His award-winning investigations include exposes on corruption in city government, drug abuse within the New York Police Department; breakdowns in the Fire Department that cost the lives of two firemen and systemic abuses in the New York military. Several articles resulted in governmental and legislative changes, the dismissals of top officials and the criminal convictions of wrongdoers.For more than two decades, Murray also served as Criminal Justice Editor at the New York Post, overseeing a bureau of reporters working from inside NYPD Headquarters.Before joining the Post in 1986 as a reporter and Associate Editor, he was an award winning journalist at the New York Daily News, where he served as the newspaper's Police Headquarters Bureau Chief and later as Chief Investigative Reporter assigned to New York's City Hall during a period known as "The Great Municipal Corruption Scandals.One of his books, "The Man Who Warned America," (Harper Collins, 2003) reached a New York Times best-seller list and he's been a guest on the "Today Show," "Larry King Live," and "Imus," among others.And Murray continues his award-winning reporting as a columnist with DNAinfo.com New York, scoring top honors from The New York Press Club and the distinguished Society of Silurians.Fun Fact: Murray spent six weeks on tour with "The Who" traveling North America in their private plane with an all-access pass.

I appreciate all comments! But lately some have struck me as odd... telling me to take a post down, some nonsense about my Q&A with Selwyn Raab -- numerous others... I don't think they are real comments, I think someone may be playing games with me, a competitor or the rat bastard I alluded to above. I do have enemies, all of whom I have written about, so a little harmless sabotage, I wouldn't put it passed them. "True Believers" - this doesn't apply to you -- I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!! Make up names for yourselves so I can get to know you. I see "anonymous" five times under a post, it could be one dude for all I know pretending to be many...

fuck em Ed, just keep doing what your doing and ignore chicken shit keyboard tough guys. If I seem pro wiseguy its because of where I grew up and who I grew up with and how I was treated by some not all LE

It's easy for some to hide behind a screenname. What a tough-guy! "Take it Down", "Shut Up!", "Keep Quiet", "Remember Your Place"... To the bozo that hid behind the "Anonymous" comment: June 27, 2013 at 7:15 PM, why don't YOU take yourself down! Ok "Princess" with the big stones that he posts with his name? If you don't like what you read, stay off the site.

And I'm not hiding behind an "Anonymous" posting. THIS is what I do when people tell me to "keep quiet". COSA NOSTRA and HOW DETERRENCE WORKS www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ycYZu6RBM Now for the haters that will follow my comments with other insignificUnt comments, I like the "hate" comments, it feeds my ego~~~ haha ~~~Belinda Rossetti

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I edited and updated this....."Nobody here can take a joke.""What's that? A gun? I got a gun. He got a gun. He got a gun... Everybody got guns!""Nothing's personal? What the fck is life, if it's not personal?!" "You smug kike midget, creeping around like a fcking dentist with the aether."

Fortunately, the show creators seemingly realized this -- and adjusted course accordingly, killing off a major character at the end of season two and introducing a new one in the current season.

This effectively administered a jolt of much-needed vitality into the HBO series, based (loosely, very loosely) on a true crime story about fortune, power, and greed centered on 1920s Atlantic City, but also in Chicago, New York, and tertiary locals.

Somewhere in the second season, it seemed increasingly apparent that behind all the great character actor…

Early last Thursday morning, following coordinated raids in New York City and within and beyond the GTA, 13 alleged members of organized crime were arrested as part of "a sweeping investigation into the fentanyl trade," the RCMP said.

Four mobsters tied to the Gambino and Bonanno families were arrested.

Seventeen (identified below) were named in the indictment altogether; five escaped the predawn raids in Canada and are lamming it in the Great White North. They face Canada-wide warrants and one of the five "in the wind" is a descendant of a notorious Ndrangheta family based in Hamilton. His father and grandfather were both bosses.

The arrested in Canada include members of the Todaro crime family, established by the now-deceased Joseph (Lead Pipe Joe) Todaro, Sr., who took over after the death of Stefano (The Undertaker) Magaddino.

It would seem probable that the probe will have ongoing ramifications for, and possibly create serious turmoil within, New York's …

They were actually arrested months back, on Sept. 6 while driving through Indiana and leading local police on a high-speed chase. Local police discovered prescription pills and heroin in the car, as well as the potential murder weapon.

The brothers, 36, were extradited to New York this week.

Carini Jr., 35, the son of a Gambino crime family associate by the same name, was found on Sept. 2 floating in the Mill Basin Inlet off E. 58th St. and Avenue U, a few blocks from his apartment. The body showed signs of massive head trauma, with both the skull and jaw broken.

Police now say that on or around Aug. 30, Louie Iacono allegedly beat Carini’s head in with a hammer in an attempt to rob him inside an apartment on East 64th St. Brother Vincent is alleged to have helped dispose of the body.

Peter "Peter Pasta" Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York, restaurant known as Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster.

The once-promising Bonanno member who appeared after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired, now calls himself a brokester. And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him.

So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself.

But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here.)

Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week bookmaking.

“Carl wants to swallow up everybody."
--Unnamed Mafia boss via surveillance recordingPART ONE
At the end of 1972, Carlo Gambino was working on a "dramatic reorganization" of New York's Five Families, the likes of which had not been seen since 1931. As radical as this sounds, it is not unbelievable considering some events leading up to it.

Gambino wanted to rid New York of hundreds of Mafia members, then rebuild by inducting only select men who'd proved their loyalty. (He was preparing to open the books in 1973.)

Gambino, 70 at the time, believed the "Mafia must retreat to the past in order to survive," law enforcement officials said.

The first two crime families on the block were to be the Luchese and Colombo crime families. Then the Bonanno crime family.

"Twenty percent of known Mafia members in New York are currently under indictment in cases developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation alone."

A lowlife scumbag gets his due when he finally scams the wrong guy and gets his head blown off.
That's the whole story, in a nutshell. There are a few twists however.

First off, who is the wrong guy of which we speak?

In this case, he was an Irish-Italian associate of the Detroit crime family "whose wit could upstage Rodney Dangerfield's," as noted on Jon's Jail Journal. Called TwoTonys, he's told us about this piece of work in his own words, decades later while dying in prison after his conviction for this very murder.

He tells us via Shaun Attwood, the "Jon" of the jail journal, who spent years in one of America’s toughest jails, Maricopa County, which generates lots of media attention on a regular basis. (As did Sheriff Joe Arpaio himself, especially when he was freed from his own legal entanglement for civil rights violations and other minor (we're being sarcastic here) stuff via presidential pardon.)